Combustacation

How many blog posts start out by me saying how worn out I am? Well, I can't break tradition with this one...

I spent most of the weekend working. I worked and worked, and then worked some more. I worked a total of around 15 hours this weekend which meant that I was up well into the night. That was with my "regular" job where I moonlight as an antivirus support engineer.

Then I had work lined up for my own "business" on the side which also drained some more life and energy out of me. I really need some R & R coming up here soon or I am going to catch on fire like the dude that is featured here in the photo to the right.

I do have to give props to my wife though. She probably should be sick of my absence by now, but instead she just keeps encouraging me to keep going and while I've had my own stuff to do she has been working on a monstrous project of cleaning out our house and garage of junk.

That's right, I have a big dumpster sitting out in my driveway right now that is pretty well full of junk; stuff that I've either had in my house, my basement or my garage for way too long. We are in the final stages of getting some stuff rolling to do a facelift on our house. Yep, new siding, windows, soffits, facia, gutters, and two of our porches rebuilt. This should mean a much warmer and energy efficient winter for us...not to mention the quieting of the trains that pass through town in the night.

I am only working for 3 hours tomorrow. Then I'm back in the office for Thursday and then out on Friday to make a nice 4-day-weekend. Nice.

the other night I watched the movie Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil. It was a pretty good movie.

My hair is now long enough that I have moved into the ponytail stage...of sorts.

Whenever I go over to my parent's for lunch, I always have this fear that I left their place having gone to the bathroom but forgot to flush.

I heard an ad on the radio today about investing in gold. They said that it was the best investment that one could make. As a "gift go get you started" they were offering to send you a free silver dollar. Hmmmm, invest in gold and get a silver dollar.

I find it hard to sit in a breezy air-conditioned room and not want to lay back and take a nap.

I finally watched most of the movie Zeitgeist. It is very interesting, but then again most conspiracy theory movies are interesting. I am usually pretty skeptical of conspiracy theories because I don't think that people are generally intelligent enough to carry them out...but I guess you never know.

I don't like how newspeople have changed over to use the word pleaded instead of plead for the past tense of the phrase "to plead."

Presidential candidate Tommy Thompson wants to eliminate cancer. Good luck with that.

I am tired of the political races already. Bert is running against Ernie who can't say anything good about Spongebob. Puppets. That's all they ultimately are. Puppets.

We temporarily provided refuge for a dog on Sunday, but then she peed on our floor so we put her outside and called the vet. The vet found her owner and she made it back home OK.

That football player who got in trouble for dog fighting claims to have "found Jesus" through all of his turmoil surrounding the incident. I'm pretty sure that Jesus was trying to hide as he probably didn't want to be involved in dog fighting. Poor Jesus.

That is enough for tonight. I think that my headache is strong enough now that I should listen to it and stop for the night.

Worn Out

Another work week in the books.

We had some friends from Denver visiting the area earlier this week so we got a hotel room next to theirs and hung out for the evening. I went to college with both of them, for 2 years at least. After they graduated they got married. They're a great couple. [Greg and Amber, it was great to see you. We'll do it again sooner rather than later]

What that rendezvous was over I had to go back to work. I'm not really going to talk about work because it is just not a good practice to put work related stuff out here on the WWW since the powers that be can find ways of possibly using that material to show your can the door. So what I will say though is that I'm glad that I'm done working for the week.

Saturday's forecast looks like I'll be helping my sister move. She's out of a relationship that she's been in and now she's moving on so I'll be part of the help.

I was really hoping to do a follow-up blog about how happy I was that I had found my CDs, but no such fate. I haven't yet begun the process of seeing where to start over with all that.

So now it is Friday night @ 23:08 and I'm now sagging just a bit from the fatigue and the sips of scotch that I've thus far enjoyed.

Food for thought- if there is a parallel universe, will I ever get to know myself?

On The Road Again

I am up north in the Twin Cities for work from today until Friday.

Tonight we got to the hotel and checked in and I did a little bit of work for about an hour and then it was out to hit the town. First stop was supper.

We drove out to Menneehaha park where there was this pretty cool little seafood place that you could choose to either dine indoors or outside on the terrace. There were families eating, kids playing, loads of people riding their bikes. The scenery was really cool and the atmosphere just felt very lively.

When we were finished there we went with a former co-worker to check out his digs. He had purchased a house not too long ago in Minneapolis and he wanted to show it off to us. It was a very nice place, much like many of the houses in the area. Both Minneapolis and St. Paul have tons of older homes from the Victorian style. It was fun just driving around and looking at all of the rich architecture that was poured into these various communities.

The thing that I love about the Twin Cities is that everywhere you go you find people. There are parks everywhere and many of the streets have designated lanes for bicycles. I also love the quaint feeling of driving down the streets of these mature neighborhoods and seeing all of the local businesses that thrive. While there are certainly big corporations that are located here there is still a sense of community and supporting the local small business. This is what truly makes for a good sense of community and economy.

The last stop was this place in St. Paul that was on Grand Ave. It was a creamery that made both their own cones and ice cream. I had been told that it was good, but it was more affirming to see the line of people waiting to receive their cold treats. The line started in the store...and wrapped around and out the door to the sidewalk outside. We probably waited 15 minutes or so to get served but it was well worth it.

Grand Ave in St. Paul is known for its small business and shops along the strip. Four or 5 miles of storefronts and houses that have been converted into businesses keep alive into the evenings with people either shopping or walking around. I love the fact that they didn't come in and bulldoze the homes out of the neighborhood; they recycled them.

Although I probably wouldn't want to live here, it is a great place to visit.

Ugh!!!

My brain feels pretty fried at the moment.

I took last week off of work and I really needed that break. I worked on a room in my house that I started back in November. I didn't get as far on it as I had hoped but I guess every little bit counts. I worked on it Mon-Thursday.

I had resigned myself to only work on the room during the day. Then at night I would just relax and have time with family and friends. I pretty well met this goal. My daughter went up to my wife's folks for the week so it was just me, the Mrs, and our son. We had a good time.

Then this past weekend we were able to see some friends that will be moving. They have been friends of ours for several years and now they will be moving because of the guy's job. Even though we only saw each other every few months, we had kids close to the same age, we all had a great time, and we will be missing them greatly.

I also found out last week that it sounds like my parents are going through another nasty spell. I emailed my mom to see if I could get some answers without asking any real questions. I kind of did. Then I emailed my dad more directly about it last night, but when I checked my email this morning I just had one of those "failure to deliver" messages...because my ISP sucks. It said that it would continue to try and send the message. So I've just been waiting. In the meantime I have been trying to check the account to see if he has gotten my message and/or replied back. I can't do that right now though because our webmail with my same ISP...which sucks...is down.

I hate our ISP, but it is our only option right now. Well, its our only option for broadband. We did have another company come into our town and offer an alternative wireless broadband connection but we can't pick up the signal at our place. What a bummer.

So now I sit here at work feeling like I want to jump out of my skin.

Our daughter will be ready to start school next fall so this weekend my wife and I are going to be attending our first home school conference to look at curriculum. What a mind bubbler.

Raising my rates

Over the weekend I had to come to terms with the fact that I am not making enough with my side business to really make it worth anything. If anything, I'm probably actually losing money doing what I'm doing.

If any of you don't know about it, I have my own side business called Custom Computer Works

I do PC repair and consultation. I work with a lot of different issues for residents and businesses.

The trouble that I was having for quite a while was that I wanted to be able to bring in some additional income, but I also didn't want to have to charge people too much for my services. There are so many places around that charge $50-65/hour. I really feel that might be a bit much. And why do I think that's too much? Because I am a miser; a cheapskate! I don't like to spend any more money than I have to, but I guess that life doesn't always afford me that convenience.

So over the weekend I decided to revisit my costs and what I would charge people for my services. I think I've hit a happy medium. I think that I've come up with rates that will put some more cash in my pocket while still being very competitive with my prices.

Now I just have to see what a guy needs to do to build his customer base.